Peter Darvill-Evans (born 1954) is an English writer and editor.
He was born and lived in Buckinghamshire until he went to university, graduating in 1975 fromUniversity College, London with a degree in History.
In 1976 Darvill-Evans joined the staff of Games Centre, a specialist games shop in London. He became the manager of a branch of the shop, then manager of wholesale sales, sellingboard games and eventuallyrole-playing games.
In 1979 he became employed byGames Workshop, becoming first its Trade Sales Manager, then General Manager, responsible for purchases, sales, distribution and magazine publishing.[1]: 45 When Games Workshop relocated toNottingham, Darvill-Evans left the company, preferring to stay in London.[1]: 48 He then wrote his first of threeFighting Fantasy gamebooks forPuffin Books.
In 1989, he became a junior editor atW. H. Allen Ltd, initially overseeing theTarget Books imprint. He also oversaw the Nexus imprint oferotic fiction for men, redesigning its logo and cover style as well as changing its editorial direction.
Target's main output was novelisations of the popularscience-fiction television seriesDoctor Who, and when Darvill-Evans arrived he immediately realised that there were very fewDoctor Who stories left to novelise. This problem was exacerbated by the cancellation of the television series at the end of 1989. When WH Allen sold the Nexus andDoctor Who lines toVirgin Publishing, Darvill-Evans went with them. Deciding to go freelance, he was made redundant at his own request, and entered negotiations with theBBC to license Virgin to produce full-length, original novels carrying on the story of the series from the point where the television programme had left off.
Launched in 1991, this successful line of novels were known as theNew Adventures.[2] Darvill-Evans set down guidelines for the writers,[3] and even wrote one novel himself,Deceit.[4] Other output from the Virgin fiction department during his time there included another series ofDoctor Who novels (theMissing Adventures, featuring previous Doctors and companions); a series of novels following the character ofBernice Summerfield; theVirgin Worlds imprint of new mainstream science-fiction and fantasy novels. Non-science fiction lines included Black Lace, the first mainstream erotic fiction imprint targeted at women; the Crime and Passion imprint; Idol, a homoerotic fiction imprint for men; and Sapphire, a lesbian erotica line.
Other successes included media-tie in books such as theRed Dwarf Programme Guide, which served as the template for guides about other cult television series, and a series of novelisations based on theJimmy McGovern-scripted seriesCracker starringRobbie Coltrane.
By 1997, however, Virgin Publishing decided to emphasise more non-fiction books by and about celebrities. TheirDoctor Who licence renewal negotiations fell in 1996, a year in which the BBC was seeking to bring all theDoctor Who licences back in house. Consequently, Virgin'sDoctor Who licence was not renewed and instead the BBC opted to launch theirown series ofDoctor Who novels. In 1998, Darvill-Evans managed among other projects the editing and production of Virgin's Guide to British Universities, and personally supervised the copy-editing and proofreading ofRichard Branson's autobiographyLosing My Virginity.
Virgin closed its fiction department in 1999, with Darvill-Evans departing the company and moving toSouthampton. He continued to freelance, writing severalDoctor Who novels for BBC Books, amongst various other editing and writing work.
In 2001 he began working for theInland Revenue, subsequently renamedHM Revenue and Customs, and became an Inspector of Taxes.
Working full time for HMRC has left little time for writing, but Darvill-Evans has maintained his interest in the worlds of cult fiction, in particular Doctor Who and Fighting Fantasy. He has contributed to the following:
Having retired from HMRC at the end of March 2022, Darvill-Evans has resumed writing - very slowly. In November 2022 and March 2023 he performed his first (and so far only) solo gigs as a singer/guitarist.
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